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Authors: Damien Lewis

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Just twenty-three years old, Druce had been schooled first at Cheam, in Surrey, where he was in the same class as the Duke of Edinburgh. From there he went to Sherborne School in Dorset, followed by the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He’d initially volunteered for the Glider Pilot Regiment, but discovered a more natural home for his talents lay within the SOE. Fluent in French, Dutch and Flemish, and blessed with an insatiable thirst for adventure, Druce was also a natural fit for the SAS.

Druce would earn renown within the SAS as being the ‘top hat warrior’. Sporting a black silk top hat and corduroy trousers on operations, he would demonstrate a vital quality amongst those tasked with behind-enemy-lines operations: total unflappability. In one incident he accosted a fleeing German motorcycle trooper, discovering a cured ham secreted within his saddlebag. As the soldier refused to give up his motorbike with suitable alacrity, Druce proceeded to whack him around the face with the ham, unseating him, at which point he passed the meat around his ravenous men.

One of the original Operation Loyton maps – one that Druce doubtless pored over as the Whitley aircraft droned onwards towards its uncertain date with destiny – has been preserved for posterity in the official Operation Loyton war diary. The map is marked with a tiny black circle, with beside it written ‘Captain Druce Party 13 Aug DZ’.

The DZ (drop zone) is sandwiched between La Petite Raon and Vieux-Moulin, two tiny French hamlets lying less than 3 miles south-west of a village called Moussey. Otherwise unremarkable, Moussey would come to have a real significance for the SAS. But as Druce studied that map, he must have wondered where in the surrounding forests and mountains – including the aptly named Les Bois Sauvages (the Wild Woods)
 
– the Maquis might have made their base.

Not so many months before making this flight, Druce had trodden the rugged hills of the Vosges disguised as a Frenchman as he escaped from the enemy. He knew the kind of territory they were dropping into here. He sensed an opportunity to wage shoot ’n’ scoot guerrilla warfare – the SAS’s speciality – using the remote highland forest as the sanctuary in which they would evade an enraged enemy, before regrouping, rearming and resting, ahead of the next hit-and-run attack.

Druce relished the prospect. There was little obvious bravado about him, but somehow his men would come to feel as if they were never truly in trouble when under his command, no matter how bad their situation might seem.

And, as the warplane rumbled onwards towards that distant drop zone, things were about to get very troubled indeed.

Chapter Two

At around two o’clock in the morning the Whitley’s dispatcher roused the parachutists. They’d taken off five hours earlier and most had ended up dozing through the noisy, claustrophobic flight. The aircraft had been routed away from obvious bombing targets and had avoided the enemy night fighters and ground fire, leaving the men free to sleep largely undisturbed.

‘Twenty minutes to the DZ!’ the dispatcher yelled above the engine noise. ‘Twenty minutes to the jump!’

As the Whitley began to lose altitude – the men would make the jump from 1,000 feet – the dispatcher passed around a bottle of rum, in case anyone fancied a last-minute shot of Dutch courage. That done, he gave the signal to ‘stand up – hook up’. Twelve shadowy figures rose to their feet, strapping their parachutist’s tough, canvas kitbag to their right leg, and forming up in line in jump sequence.

Each man clipped the soldier in front’s parachute cord – his ‘static line’ – to a rope that ran the length of the fuselage. As they leapt from the aircraft the static line would remain attached, flipping free the jumper’s Model X parapack and releasing the rigging lines and parachute. Nervous excitement drove away the last vestiges of sleep.

As each man checked the line of the jumper in front, not a few hands were seen to be shaking. With some, doubtless, this was the stomach-knotting surge of fear, but with most, Druce included, it was the effect of the adrenalin that was pumping through their veins.

There was a high-pitched whine of hydraulics as the bomb doors inched apart, their opening accompanied by an inrush of fresh air. It proved surprisingly cold. The Whitley could lose only so much altitude, for the Vosges rise to over 4,600 feet in height and, even in summer, conditions on the higher reaches were known to be bitter.

The dispatcher strode down the line of men, making a final check. To his consternation he found that somehow Druce’s static line had been threaded through his parachute harness. Had he jumped then, he would have been left dangling beneath the fuselage, with no way either to parachute to earth or to ease his way back inside the aircraft.

Every member of Druce’s stick wore a pair of rubber-soled boots – perfect for silent operations – plus a special paratrooper’s Denison smock, with a strap that fastened between the legs to prevent it from billowing out during the descent. Dome-shaped helmets with chinstraps had replaced the old-style, wide-rimmed British Army ‘tin hat’. And in each of their sets of webbing was stuffed the distinctive SAS beret, with the iconic winged-dagger cap badge affixed.

Since the summer of 1944 the SAS had been supposedly ‘banned’ from wearing their distinctive sandy-coloured beret. With the Regiment’s return from North African and Mediterranean operations, it had been subsumed into regular British Airborne Forces. Many argued this was all part of an effort by the military establishment to exert some form of control over the freewheeling, largely self-directed force – one that had faced repeated accusations of being a ‘private army’.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the men of the SAS had been ordered to adopt the bright-red Parachute Regiment beret. Unarguably distinctive and warlike, it was fine for front-line combat troops, but with its high visibility it was hardly suited to a covert force inserting far behind enemy lines. Many vowed to adopt the red beret only once their sandy ones had worn out – and they were proving remarkably hard-wearing. Others had opted for a peaked khaki mountain cap, which would prove a useful head covering for operations in the Vosges.

Other recent kit changes had proved somewhat more popular. The SAS’s old faithful, the .45-calibre Thompson sub-machine guns – the so-called ‘tommy gun’ favoured by 1930s gangsters and 1940s elite operators alike – was still around, but mostly it had been replaced by the lighter-weight 9mm Sten gun, nicknamed the ‘baked bean can’.

The trusty Lewes incendiary bomb had been superseded by the ‘Gammon bomb’. The Gammon consisted of a weight of plastic explosive (PE) housed in a canvas bag, connected to a fuse than would detonate upon impact and no matter the angle at which the makeshift grenade struck its target. The most common size employed a kilogram of PE, and whoever threw it had to keep his mouth open, to avoid blowing out his eardrums. The great advantage of the Gammon over the Lewes was that it could disable heavy vehicles, crucial when going up against the might of German armour.

The talismanic Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife – with its 7-inch blade, heavy handle to give a firm grip in the wet, cross-guard to prevent hands slipping, plus two razor-sharp edges and a sharp, stiletto profile – was still standard SAS issue as the tool for silent killing. But as the war had progressed, most had learned just how hard it was to knife a man to death. Normally, it required two soldiers to do it properly – one to hold the victim, and the other to drive in the blade – and it was invariably a messy, somewhat hit-and-miss affair.

Recently, a ‘Fighting Knife Mark II’ had been developed. Known affectionately as the ‘Smatchet’, it resembled a cross between a hatchet and a machete. A miniature version of the original Fairbairn-Sykes knife was also available. With a flat thumb and forefinger grip, and a 3-inch blade, it was designed to be hidden in the lapel of a jacket. There was also a robust flick knife on offer for the real aficionados.

But, if close-up killing was required, experience had proved that it was generally easier to shoot an adversary in the head with a pistol. To that end, the excellent Browning 9mm ‘Hi-Power’ GP35 had replaced the heavy and cumbersome Colt .45. Likewise, the .303 Lee–Enfield rifle had been supplanted by the superlative American .30 calibre Winchester M1-A1 carbine, which was half the weight of the British rifle. Though not as accurate at long range, it had a semi-automatic rate of fire, and its ammunition weighed half that of the British .303 round, meaning far more could be carried.

The folding-stock version of the M1 carbine was perfect for paratroopers. The M1 – designed by two junior machinists at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company during their spare time – was to become one of the most widely used weapons amongst Allied forces in the Second World War. Captured German weaponry was also much in demand, especially the Schmeisser sub-machine gun. Once such a weapon had been seized, SAS operators tended to be loath to give it up.

Personal kit was stowed in a canvas Bergen – a military rucksack – with an external steel frame. The heavier British ‘Compo’ rations had been replaced by twenty-four-hour ration packs containing tinned sardines, cheese, meat dripping, oatmeal biscuits, soup cubes, tea, sweets and chocolates. A new and super-efficient lightweight stove had been developed, one that burned solid-fuel Hexamine blocks, similar to firelighters.

Each parachutist’s Bergen-load of gear was stuffed inside his canvas ‘leg bag’, which was strapped to his right leg for the jump. The leg bag was held in place by clips, and would be released and lowered once the parachutist had jumped, to be left hanging some 15 feet below him. That way, the bag would land first, taking the impact of its own weight.

Or at least, that was the theory. In practice the leg bag had proved cumbersome to deploy, and was more often dangerous rather than helpful to the parachutist. It had a habit of snagging during exit, or failing to release and lower properly, with disastrous consequences for the jumper.

Writing in the Operation Loyton war diary, Colonel Franks commented on the leg bag as being ‘utterly useless. This has been proved and pointed out time and again. Present leg bags MUST NEVER be taken on operations again.’

Unfortunately, the Op Loyton advance party was saddled with the leg bags. One of those figures strapping on this ‘utterly useless’ contraption was Captain John Hislop, in effect Druce’s second in command. As he prepared for the jump, he reminded himself of the somewhat cumbersome code words to be exchanged with the Resistance – more commonly known as the Maquis.


Nous sommes les guerriers de Malicoco
’ (we are the warriors of Malicoco), the SAS soldiers were to declare, though no one had the slightest idea where ‘Malicoco’ might be.


Bamboula vous attend
’ (Bamboula awaits you) was the expected reply, though who on earth ‘Bamboula’ might be was anyone’s guess.

As Hislop was well aware, some of the less erudite of the men had struggled to master the unwieldy exchange. Mostly, they were fighters, not linguists – their new commander, Captain Druce, being the obvious exception. Hislop wasn’t overly happy about their last-minute change of command, and he wondered what kind of man Druce might prove to be on the ground.

‘At the time we had no idea why this change was made, and found it disconcerting,’ Hislop remarked. As Druce had only joined the SAS recently no one knew him well, or was particularly aware of his capabilities.

Hislop wasn’t entirely an SAS man, and he was, if anything, even more of a colourful character than Druce. With his remarkably boyish face, swept-back dark hair and laughing slits of eyes, Hislop was the archetypal dashing Englishman, and he revelled in such an image. His was a slight, polo player’s physique, compared to Druce’s rugby player’s robustness but, on the coming mission, both would prove themselves to have the hearts of lions.

He and Druce had met only once before, at 2 SAS’s then headquarters, which was situated at the end of Prestwick golf course, in Ayrshire, Scotland. Of course, Hislop had heard stories about Druce’s epic escape from the enemy, one that had taken him on foot across half of occupied Europe in ‘phenomenally short time’. It had ended with Druce reaching London and checking himself into Piccadilly’s Berkeley Hotel, as if he’d just been out for a short stroll in Green Park.

As the powerful figure of Druce braced himself beside the Whitley’s uncertain exit, he was trying his damnedest to memorize all the names of his men. Goodfellow, Dill, Lodge, Crossfield, Hall, Stanley . . . he repeated the names like a mantra. Hislop, by contrast, was imagining himself astride a speeding horse on a racecourse; he’d found it was the best way to steel himself for such a leap into the unknown.

Hislop had refused the tot of rum that had been passed around the aircraft – on the basis that most jockeys ride best sober, and parachuting couldn’t be greatly different. Born in Quetta, India, in 1911, at thirty-three years of age Hislop was very much the ‘old man’ of the stick. His father, Major Arthur Hislop, served in India with the 35th Scinde Horse, but his son’s interests had proved to lie more with the racing fraternity. Over the ten years of his racing career, John Hislop had proved himself one of the finest amateur jockeys of all time.

At the outbreak of war he had, by his own admission, tried to wangle himself a position that would enable him to carry on with the main business of the day: race riding. Citing a ‘regrettable lack of military aptitude’, Hislop’s commander at the 21st Anti-Tank Regiment had asked him to find another posting. Unsuited to the regimented constraints of the regular military, Hislop confessed that he had ‘faced the prospect of the future with some misgiving’.

BOOK: The Nazi Hunters
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